The Mertens Unrolled Network (MU-Net): a high dynamic range fusion neural network for through the windshield driver recognition

Max Ruby; David S. Bolme; Joel Brogan; David Cornett III; Baldemar Delgado; Gavin Jager; Christi Johnson; Jose Martinez-Mendoza; Hector Santos-Villalobos; Nisha Srinivas

doi:10.1117/12.2566765

23 April 2020 The Mertens Unrolled Network (MU-Net): a high dynamic range fusion neural network for through the windshield driver recognition

Max Ruby, David S. Bolme, Joel Brogan, David Cornett III, Baldemar Delgado, Gavin Jager, Christi Johnson, Jose Martinez-Mendoza, Hector Santos-Villalobos, Nisha Srinivas

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11415, Autonomous Systems: Sensors, Processing, and Security for Vehicles and Infrastructure 2020; 114150B (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2566765
Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

Face recognition of vehicle occupants through windshields in unconstrained environments poses a number of unique challenges ranging from glare, poor illumination, driver pose and motion blur. In this paper, we further develop the hardware and software components of a custom vehicle imaging system to better overcome these challenges. After the build out of a physical prototype system that performs High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, we collect a small dataset of through-windshield image captures of known drivers. We then reformulate the classical Mertens-Kautz-Van Reeth HDR fusion algorithm as a pre-initialized neural network, which we name the Mertens Unrolled Network (MU-Net), for the purpose of fine-tuning the HDR output of through-windshield images. Reconstructed faces from this novel HDR method are then evaluated and compared against other traditional and experimental HDR methods in a pre-trained state-of-the-art (SOTA) facial recognition pipeline, verifying the efficacy of our approach.

Conference Presentation

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Max Ruby, David S. Bolme, Joel Brogan, David Cornett III, Baldemar Delgado, Gavin Jager, Christi Johnson, Jose Martinez-Mendoza, Hector Santos-Villalobos, and Nisha Srinivas "The Mertens Unrolled Network (MU-Net): a high dynamic range fusion neural network for through the windshield driver recognition", Proc. SPIE 11415, Autonomous Systems: Sensors, Processing, and Security for Vehicles and Infrastructure 2020, 114150B (23 April 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2566765

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